1. Field of the Inaction
The invention relates to a vehicle roof with at least one roof part that can be opened during driving in the manner of a sunroof and which can also be opened in the manner of a convertible with the roof parts being shifted into a compact form and moved into a storage space in the rear part of the vehicle.
2. Description of Related Art
Vehicle roofs with roof parts that are able to open during travel are known in numerous embodiments, such as, for example, as sliding roofs, lifting roofs, sliding-lifting roofs, spoiler roofs, segmented roofs or folding roofs. Common to all of these roof types is that they are installed in a rigid vehicle roof, and thus, are surrounded on at least three sides by a rear roof part and two side roof parts which have guideways. These roofs have the advantage that they exhibit high stability even when open. But, the size of the achievable roof openings is limited and does not nearly approach the size of known convertible roofs, in which a cover made of flexible material can be folded back by a mechanism to make possible a complete opening of the roof. These convertible roofs, in turn, have the drawbacks that they can only be completely opened or completely closed, i.e., it is not possible to leave them in an intermediate position, that they generally cannot be moved during travel and that, in the closed state, especially under unfavorable storm or winter conditions, they do not offer the travelling comfort or, above all, the safety, of a closed sedan.
Also known is a so-called hardtop convertible, of the type that was found for a short period of time on Ford Motor Company products, in which the entire roof was movable, in a single rigid piece, from a position sitting on the body of the car to a position stowed within the vehicle trunk. However, with the roof in its stowed condition, the vehicle trunk became unusable for carrying luggage and the like. Other examples of hardtop convertibles can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,195,798 and 5,078,447 as well as UK Patent No. 1,181,875 and Japanese Patent Publication 4-56628. However, in all of these cases, the entire one-piece roof panel is stowed in an uncompacted form, resulting in either the loss of usable trunk space, or in the case of U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,195,798 (where the roof is stowed in a vertical orientation), the necessity of the vehicle being stationary during the conversion process.